During a tutorial today on-stage at linux.conf.au, Sun Microsystems and Frontline donated a server to the KDE project, available for shipment within hours. Aaron Seigo, Plasma developer and KDE e.V President, accepted a certificate from Ross Cunningham of Sun Microsystems and David Purdue of Frontline on behalf of the KDE project.

Ross Cunningham (left) and David Purdue (right) present the certificate for the server to Aaron Seigo and Karol Szwed

The server is a SunFire X4200, with two AMD Opteron processors, 4GB of memory and a pair of 73GB SAS disks. This generous gift is part of Sun's demonstrated commitment to supporting Open Source, and thus the KDE project.

Adriaan de Groot, in an email statement made on behalf of KDE's sysadmins, thanked Sun and Frontline for their gift. "Large Free Software projects like KDE can be run on surprisingly little infrastructure, but at the same time there is always more, extra OS platform support, developer support, build farming, quality checking, that we can do with a little more machinery and horsepower. We're happy that Sun can help us do more."

While the intended purpose of the server has not yet been finalised, there has been mention of possibly using it to increase reliability and robustness of the anonsvn service.

indeed, anonsvn is failing now and then for me. it seems that anonsvn syncs later than authenticated servers (which wouldn't be that bad), but it also seems there are at least two servers who themselves often are out of sync :)
so i get "updated to revision n" message, try to get svn log to that revision - and then it claims there is no such revision =)

Hmm, isn't that server pretty weak for projects like KDE?
It looks to me Sun would just like to hit the headlines, like supporting KDE and stuff. I mean, if they can afford to buy companies for 1 BILLION dollars, they could've been more generous if their intents are honest. Or maybe they just want to get rid of old hardware?
Anyway, it's always nice to receive a donation, but this is small news and shouldn't be on top of announcements, IMHO.

No, it's not weak. It would be one of the strongest machines in our infrastructure. When I said that KDE as a project runs on surprisingly little hardware, I meant it: we have machines that you wouldn't use as a modern doorstop supporting critical parts of the project. At the same time, we don't need monstrous kit to get things done, so this donation is, just like I said: a nice way of extending our reach.

This machine will stay in Australia; as stated in the article it will be hosted through Frontline. Probably in one of the big cities. The question whether KDE e.V. has an office is totally separate, but yes, we do: see http://ev.kde.org/contact.php

They could take a more active part and become a patron of KDE.
That would be great!!

I also wouldn't mind if google writes some applications for plasma. Specifically applications that could sync google calendar, google mail, google news, etc. with KDE applications. (I know KDE programmers could do it, but since google stands to benefit the most from it, maybe they should do it themselves. :-) It would free up time for already busy developers to concentrate on the rest of the KDE experience.)

73GB is a standard 2.5" SAS size, yes. Let's not forget that KDE doesn't really have monstrous data requirements; no multi-terabyte storage pools are needed (and when they are, we can ask for an X4500 :) ).

Well, except if we're doing an SVN mirror, because the repo is a little over 60GB right now, but Karol is going to get more disk.